All those who have purchased a Playstation 5 are familiar with the robot Astro. On every console, the small game "Astro's playroom" is pre-installed, intended as a technical demo to showcase the functions of the controller.
It's a pretty large number who play "Astro's playroom". But it varies from a quick test to check the functions to literally hundreds of hours, says Nicolas Doucet.
The game became such a big success that the Japanese Team Asobi, previously part of Sony's internal development unit, was promoted to a first-party studio. And now it's up to prove whether Astro can stand on its own feet.
It's definitely a different kind of pressure now, says Doucet.
Astro becomes a sponge
The Japan-based Asobi has tried to make "Astro bot" bigger and more clever than its predecessors. The internal research and development department has come up with new ways to use the controller.
We wanted the group to think that whatever was in "Astro's playroom" is old. How do we surprise people? So we went back to the drawing board and came up with a lot of new ideas.
One example is that Astro can transform into a large sponge that you can squeeze water out of using the pressure-sensitive axis buttons.
Opting out of sophistication
Like its predecessor, "Astro bot" is easy to get started with. Mostly, only two buttons and the left stick are used.
We prefer to have something simple, elegant, and polished rather than something very sophisticated. It's largely due to the fact that we want to reach a broad audience of all ages, he says.
What do you think will surprise players?
The variation of the content, the fact that the game renews itself every 20-30 seconds, there's always something new, says Doucet.
We have decided that Team Asobi should focus on quality over quantity, and that's a pretty tough thing to do as the industry still sometimes judges based on length and size, he says.
Gustav Sjöholm/TT
Facts:
TT
"Astro bot" is a platform game developed by Japanese Team Asobi. In the lead role, we see the robot Astro bot, which previously appeared in the VR title "Astro bot rescue mission" from 2018 and in "Astro's playroom", which comes pre-installed on all Playstation 5.
"Astro bot" is Team Asobi's first title as a Sony-owned studio, and also the first full-price game released for the console. It was released on September 6 for Playstation 5.
